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by resurrections



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Gen, timelapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:05:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resurrections/pseuds/resurrections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the mind stalls even as the body ages.</p>
            </blockquote>





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He’s nine and a struggling mess, shaky in his skin and constantly, constantly searching. Without question, they accept him. He brings with him nothing but broken mental corridors, hands more suited for dusting than writing, and the haunted air of a ghost reborn – and they accept him. It terrifies him into a state of breathless disbelief and warms him until he decides that he will most assuredly never need the fleeces of winter again.

He’s thirteen and he’s found his home. It’s not in the stiff, stark sense of duty he clings to as he had initially assumed it would be, but in drifting wisps of laughter and hot flowery teas, in the delicate clink of silver on china and the welcome-home smell of a well loved book. His heart houses many others these days and though he can’t fully grasp what that means, he’s soothed and he’s wanted and he could cry for everything good that he has been fortunate enough to touch.

He’s fifteen and a man to society, but a child to those who hold him dear. His back is straight with the elegance of a blossoming noble; his shoulders are sloping, pressed under twenty-thousand leagues of frigid water and bloodied chains. Soft things unnerve him now and the taste of sugared tea spoons makes him ill. He cries for everything good that he had been fortunate enough to touch.

He’s seventeen and wretched and retching, arms sticking out between the spaces of the balustrade to grasp at cradling breezes. He’s had too much to drink and too much time alone in his head, which always leaves him wheezing and dizzy and sick, sick to death. Sweat clings to his brow and the hazy twinkle of stars overhead promise him that tomorrow he’ll have another chance to try and fail again.

He’s on the cusp of twenty, sharp and dark and dusted with years he doesn’t yet have. He’s grown into a fine young man, if he’s to believe the passing comments of richly clothed ladies and certain insufferably teasing superiors. Even so, his hand – once only suited for dusting and pouring teas – has never held another. He leaves closeness for those who belong to the world that he only wallflowers in, saving familiarity for the revolver that brings him nearer to his goal, one red step at a time.

He’s twenty-two and the weight of eight lifetimes has brought him to his knees. Each birthday he ages one hundred years and feels younger and more frightened than ever, and the straightness of his back is less admirable and more reminiscent of a brittle thing at its breaking point. It seems to him like the ache never leaves his joints, like sorrow never leaves the web of his mind. He breathes it in on clouds of tobacco and espresso steam and as he tucks his scarf around his neck, he wonders how it’s possible for something so comforting to be so lacking.

He’s twenty-four and fourteen all over again. Hands dipped in shameful red from years of destroying are suddenly clumsy, struggling to hold that unconscious form just as his mind struggles to hold the notion of his long walk coming to a close. He finds himself searching again, searching for answers and affirmation and reasons in the delicate curve of each lash on the eyes of his sun, trying to support and be supported at the same time, indulging in a warmth he hasn’t known for winters. As he stands, unease rises with him. His trial has come to an end, perhaps. He wonders if his searching ever will.


End file.
